BLONDES AND BLUES

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 50, 21 May 1927, Page 7

BLONDES AND BLUES

BOTH LIGHT AND DARK The recent rowing contest at Oxford, between eights representing Newnham College, Cambridge, and the Oxford University Women’s Boat Club, and the races that took place on the tideway between Newnham and University College, London, and Newnham and King’s College, London, have drawn public attention to the steadily increasing popularity of rowing among women. All winter now the long, flimsy boats are out on the upper and lower reaches of the Thames, at Barking on the lake, on the Cam and Isis, and elsewhere, with their crews of fine young girl athletes, clad in sweaters and shorts, or in vests and shorts, with sweaters draped along the back and tied round the neck, wielding each a scull with that beautiful precision which comes of long training (says a writer in the “London Daily Telegraph.” How different they look from the pictures of those much-be-skirted, sometimes be-bustled, and always hat-crowned ladies who handled the oars in huge, unwieldy skiffs when the weather was fine, and were frowned upon by public opinion in the early ’nineties. In 1896 came Dr. Furnivall’s foundation of the H.G.S.C. (the Hammersmith Girls’ Sculling Club), which has since grown into a mixed club for both sexes, but was the pioneer of all the feminine rowing organisations which exist to-day. London, alone, now .has fifteen clubs, and there are nearly forty others up and down the country, including Newnham, which has been in existence a good many years. The Women’s Amateur Rowing Association, promoted by Miss Summerton some four years ago, was not exactly welcomed by the Amateur Rowing Association in its early days, but since then it has made great headway, and is even now planning competitions and inter-club and college fixtures inannual regatta will take place next September. Nowadays many women’s clubs compete in the amateur regattas; inter-clubs and college fixtures increase each year. One of the oldest is the “Furnivall” meeting, which takes place just after the boat race. All entering for this regatta keep their hands in most of the winter. Sculling for girls of good normal physique, if they are properly trained, if they take ordinary precautions to avoid chills, and refrain from unnecessary and foolhardy overstrain, is a splendidly healthy exercise. Watch the expert at work; note the upright back that bends flexibly to the movement of the sliding seat, the wrists that rise and fall easily and without jerking to the backward and forward movement of the scull, the whole body taut like a spring for the beginning of the long pull .and the strong pull, all the muscles working in unison to achieve the quick, unhurried rhythmic stroke, relaxing as the stroke ends, and the blade sweeps backward, lightly feathering the water. This is real sculling and pretty work to watch.